AUTHOR
Jean-Pierre Fillard came from the University of Algiers when Algeria was a full French territory. I initially specialized in nuclear physics but soon turned to the study of solid state electronics. At that time the "transistor effect" had just been discovered and the buzz was about understanding the electronic mechanisms inside matter. One of the topics was to understand the key issues of the atomic defects lying in the starting semiconductor crystals. This was the field which motivated for me three decades of research.

Now that activity has turned to pure technology, following an endless Moore's law. So I tell people that I was, scientifically, born with the transistor and I died with it! Incidentally, I was elected a fellow of the British Institute of Physics in 1978 and belonged to a flurry of international scientific associations.

In 1967, I obtained a full thesis from the University of Montpellier in France where I was soon upgraded to a full Professor and launched a research laboratory in the field of solid state physics. I am the author or co-author of some 300 publications, communications or collective books and a personal book — Near Field Optics and Nanoscopy (World Scientific, 1996). In 1985 I initiated a series of international conferences DRIP (Defect Recognition and Image Processing) which continue around the world every two years.

During these three decades of intense research work, I had the opportunity to visit many places in Europe, the US, Israel, Japan and even stay in China as invited lecturer. I retired in 1998, as a Professor Emeritus, after winning a cancer episode and I, then, became interested in the evolution and the new prospects opened up by Science and Technology 2.0.

SUMMARY

In this follow up to Brain vs Computer: The Challenge of the Century, Jean-Pierre Fillard brings together diverse perspectives to address the recurring theme of rivalry between man and machine.Accelerated by recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic that caught the world by surprise and brought it to a standstill, the use of technology has become more relevant than ever. What new conclusions can we draw in this debate featuring humans (brain) on the one side, and artificial intelligence (computer) on the other? Featuring brand new content including a complementary perspective from the arts, the author balances the argument from the traditional scientific approach of logic, rationality, and computation with instinct, intuition, and emotion. Read together with his latest offerings Longevity in a 2.0 World and Transhumanism: A Realistic Future? this trilogy culminates in an attempt to answer one of the most exciting questions of our time.